


Apparition

by Shoulderpadfoot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Apparition, Birthday Fluff, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, MWPP, Sirius's leather jacket, The Burrow, in that creepy spider shed, secret portrait, sexy wizarding art, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoulderpadfoot/pseuds/Shoulderpadfoot
Summary: Remus has a gift for Sirius on his 17th birthday. If Sirius like it, it'll be a gift for poor nervous Remus, too.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	Apparition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [earlybloomingparentheses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/gifts), [RuinsPlume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuinsPlume/gifts), [flightytemptress27](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightytemptress27/gifts), [bigblackdog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblackdog/gifts).



> My first finished fic! This puppy was written in a fit of delight and posted before I could talk myself out of it. 
> 
> Big thanks to my encouraging pals in the Wolfstar fandom! You are magical.

“Fucking -- _ow!_ ” 

“Oh, please.” 

“You stepped on my boot!”

“Can’t you even try to be a little less high maintenance?” 

“Moooony,” his voice is low and smooth. “It’s my birthday. I don’t have to be anything but what I am. I’m the gift.” 

“I don’t know who taught you about birthdays, but I don’t think that’s how it works.” 

The world around him is still spinning, and Remus doesn’t know if it’s the lingering effects of Apparition or the firewhiskey. 

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you could do that.” 

“What, Apparate?” Keeping quiet his ability to Apparate without taking the course or the official test has been the most difficult secret Remus has ever kept -- including his status as a Teenwolf. He trains his voice to nonchalance. “Are you sure you have all your appendages?” 

Sirius actually pats himself down. “All dangly bits accounted for.” 

Remus remembers where he’s Apparated them to, worries the Prewetts might have awoken at the snap. He shushes Sirius. 

Sirius ducks a little, drink convincing him that his height is too noisy. Remus is grateful for the dark. His idiot, idiot heart. 

“Where are we, anyway? I thought you were taking me to a club.” Sirius looks about him as if there might be a long line outside a thumping nightclub nearby, and he only missed it. He realizes they are...nowhere. 

“It _is_ a club, just not the kind you were expecting.” 

“Is it the Farm of the Month Club, Moony? Because I think you’ve mis--” 

“Shh!” Remus hisses. “This way!” He takes Sirius’s hand and pulls him to the far side of the outbuilding. 

Dew seeps into his trainers and his pulse hammers away in his ears, but most of Remus’s sense is stored in the skin touching Sirius’s hand, the cuff of Sirius’s new leather jacket cold and buttery against his wrist. Remus knows how much trouble he’ll be in if the Prewetts wake up and he has to explain. Expulsion, sure. And that’s after the hexes -- these parents raised two twin aurors, and from what Remus has heard, their sister Molly’s no joke, either. And _that_ ’s not counting the humiliation of the explanation he hasn’t been able to give himself: that he’d stolen James’s cloak to spy on the Apparition class in the Great Hall, that he’d researched the Trace to know that if he traveled from magical property to magical property, no one would actually know he was Apparating under age, that he’d hidden all this from Sirius because it was for his birthday, from Peter because he's awful at secrets, from James because -- and here Remus’s cheeks grow hot as if he can see James’s face in the dark -- because learning to Apparate in order to sneak to the Burrow under cover of darkness for a mission like this, just because Sirius had turned 17, Jesus, it had “soppy poof” written all over it. James isn’t an idiot. 

But maybe Remus is. He and Sirius press their backs against the wall of the shed, looking out on the dark-against-dark outline of a grassy hillside. Remus can’t see the fog of their breath in the November dark, but he knows it’s there. He blesses the night -- although soon he’ll blow his own cover anyway.

_What a gift_. The voice in his head is acid. _N_ _o way out now._

No, he has to go through with it. He has to know. He has to _say_. He’ll explode with it otherwise. 

He feels along the outer wall of the shed until his hand finds the cold metal of a padlock. He _alohamoras_ it deftly, and once they’re inside, he lights his wand. 

In the weak light, Sirius looks perplexed, perhaps a little scared. Remus loves the little crease of his brow, the -- _God_ \-- the shadows of his cheekbones. His grey eyes face the ceiling and he crouches and swats at something above him. 

From near the ground he says, “Moony, why did you take me to this Spider Doom Shed for my birthday?” 

Remus wonders the same thing. This feels like his absolutely dumbest choice ever. But when has Fabian Prewett ever lied? No one’s ever protected Remus’s dignity like Fabian Prewett. If he says it’s here, it’s here. 

“Light your wand,” Remus says. “We’re looking for…” but he doesn’t have to finish. There’s a giant rectangular object leaning against the wall, draped in a filthy blanket. This has to be it. He fishes around at the nearest corner and tugs the blanket down, a cloud of dust and debris rippling in every direction. 

For a moment, Remus forgets Sirius is there. He can’t believe the painting is real. 

Inside the thick, tarnished gold frame, a work of wizarding art: two men, bathed in candle light, both nude, one reclining on a sofa, the other lying on top of him with one arm working between the first man’s thighs. He stares intently into the other’s eyes. The first man lets his head fall back in ecstasy. Their breath is heavy. 

“Moony?” Sirius’s voice is small.

Remus only looks toward him. 

“Moony, why did you bring me here?” 

_Because Fabian Prewett told me Dumbledore had stored this painting here when families had complained about it in the corridors of the castle? Because I couldn’t buy you anything? Because I wanted to see you see this painting? Because I needed you to know? Because --_ “Because I thought you might...want to see this? With me?” It sounds so frail, so pathetic. 

Sirius whispers, _“Nox_.” Remus can feel himself dying. He was wrong. His own wand falls from his fingers and rolls somewhere on the dusty floor. 

  
Then: Sirius's soft hands cradle Remus's head. Sirius’s lips taste like licorice. The jacket is as warm inside as it is cool outside. The beam at Remus’s back is rough and hard. 


End file.
